Windsor and Maidenhead council migrates services to cloud

The IT team at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead is planning to put all its IT
services on to a cloud infrastructure within 12-18 months.

These include business-critical services such as adult and children care services, transport
services, council tax, and revenue and benefits.

“There is tremendous pressure on IT budget and organisations have only two options – either
outsource or adopt an intelligent way of doing IT which is cloud computing,” Rocco Labellarte, head
of technology and change delivery at the borough, told Computer Weekly at the Cloud Expo Europe
2013 event.

Labellarte joined the Windsor and Maidenhead council in 2012 to help it embark on its cloud
strategy.

The borough had developed a cloud roadmap in 2010 but it was stalled because it was too
ambitious and unachievable, he said.

“Now, the timing is right and the benefits of adopting cloud computing are proven,” he said. “If
the government bodies want to adopt cloud, now is the time.

“There will always be cuts to IT budgets and we have to demonstrate value for money and
delivering IT on the cloud will help us drive efficiencies,” he said.

The Windsor and Maidenhead borough had more than 200 IT staff five years ago. Today, there are
15 technical support staff and 20 applications support staff, Labellarte said.

The borough has already taken the first steps in its journey to the cloud. It has fully
virtualised and consolidated its two datacentre sites. It has also implemented a virtual
desktop infrastructure (VDI) to support IT consumerisation trends.

“Our VDI environment is on a pilot run and we will roll it out in March this year,” Labellarte
said.

As for its cloud strategy, the IT team is open to public cloud, private cloud or a hybrid cloud
approach.

“We are not precious about any type of cloud or any particular supplier. What we want is a
technology partnership where the supplier will help us bring IT efficiencies, give us confidence
about security and drive efficiencies,” he said.

“We don’t want a supplier to tell us how great unified communications is, but one that will
demonstrate how it will make our IT robust.”

Readying internal IT for the cloud

The borough is inviting suppliers to tender including AWS, Microsoft Azure as well as private
cloud vendors on March 15, 2013. “On the supplier day, we will articulate what our cloud strategy
is and we will tell what aspects we want from different suppliers,” Labellarte said.

The team is already familiar with Microsoft’s platforms as it has gone down the Office 365
route.

“We are also about to take on SharePoint but one problem is that we have only thin clients and Microsoft
SharePoint does not work purely on thin clients. But Microsoft claims it has fixed it. We will test
it out in a fortnight,” he said.

But the IT team wants a combination of five or six services that will together form its cloud
infrastructure. “We want one supplier for networking, one for IaaS,
one for PaaS, one for unified communications and one for telephony,” he said.

“The services have to meet our crucial criteria. We are looking for zero upfront investment and
an infrastructure that will drive efficiencies,” Labellarte said.

The team is confident about managing the cloud infrastructure on its own. “Our team is strong in
managing IT procurement and security and we are confident we will be able to yield results,” he
said.

Were there any challenges to moving to the cloud for a public sector organisation? “The IT team
wanted a large chunk of our services on the cloud. But as out budgets remained static, we had to
show the numbers and show that the business case stacks up. That’s why minimal upfront cost is
key,” he said.

Fear among government bodies to adopt cloud

According to Labellarte, there is a “fear factor” among local authorities about using cloud
computing services.

“If one organisation does it, others will certainly follow suit and we want to be the first ones
to do it,” Labellarte said.

“At the moment it is a three-horse race to cloud among the local authorities. In addition to us,
only Surrey County Council and Edinburgh Council are advanced to adopt cloud truly.”

Migrating just one application, such as an email client or HR application, will not help users
yield its benefits, warns Labellarte. That would mean having to spend on cloud as well as to
managing in-house IT.

True benefits will come when cloud is adopted fully for a major chunk of services and currently,
just three UK local authorities are closer to achieving that, he said.

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